With lip-licking greed, the national media have begun their exhaustive coverage of the 2008 Presidential race. Even as they "deplore" the fact the we all must endure nearly two full years of non-stop political-horse-race coverage, they race to provide us with - guess what? - non-stop political-horse-race coverage. Not substantive coverage of the candidate's positions on the issues - why, that might actually HELP voters, but horse-race coverage: who's ahead in the polls, who said what about his/her opponent, and all the latest gotcha.
I have long advocated the point of view that meaningful campaign finance reform can't happen until TV and radio broadcasters are forced to provide free campaign time to candidates as part of the price of their exploitation of the public airwaves. Naturally the media avoids admitting that nearly all of the hundreds of millions of campaign dollars raised by candidates ends up in the media's own pockets. Now - FINALLY - a courageous politician speaks truth to power.
Last night ABC7News correspondent Mark Matthews
http://abclocal.go.com/...
tried the usual media gotcha attack on Boxer, attempting to make Dems look corrupt because they (gasp) raise campaign funds.
And so next month, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, the new chair of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, is offering special interests a chance to go skiing and snowmobiling with him -- $2,000-dollars a head, or $5,000-dollars from a political action committee.
If you've already got plans, how about a fly fishing trip with him next summer -- same price.
Apparently Dems are supposed to totally refrain from fundraising, leaving Repubs free to rake in the big bucks and saturate the airwaves with political smears.
But Boxer stood up to Matthews. What is amazing is that it has taken this long for a politico to rebut the media machine with this simple truth:
Senator Boxer says it costs so much to campaign, everybody does it. And the big expense is television advertising.
Senator Barbara Boxer: "So I take a little bit of offense from people in the media playing holier than thou when they make billions of dollars off of campaigns, and the day they come and tell me they want to be part of the solution -- I'm here."
I'm sure this historic media moment was lost down the memory hole as soon as the newscast was over, but MAN, it still felt good!